By Mehmet Enes Beşer
Ferdinand Marcos Jr. entered 2025 with something that Philippine presidents don’t usually have time to enjoy: the sense that the ground beneath them was holding steady. The economy was neither booming nor crashing. The Marcos-Duterte coalition had already frayed, but it was fraying in a way that seemed containable, more soap opera than paradigm shift. And Marcos had the additional benefit of incumbency: the wealth, machinery, and expectation that most people in politics would bet on the sure thing of incumbency rather than the long shot of challenger status.
By the end of 2025, that expectation was no longer so obvious.
The change wasn’t caused by a single gaffe or a single viral moment. It was the aggregate effect of Marcos appearing to be reacting to events rather than leading them, and the cumulative impression that Marcos was choosing to “reform” selectively. The biggest bet was the most symbolic: Rodrigo Duterte to the International Criminal Court in March 2025.
It was a big deal to human rights groups because it was about holding a former leader accountable in a way that often feels out of reach.
For Duterte’s base—especially in the south—it was framed as humiliation and persecution: a powerful man taken away, a community disrespected, a family targeted. Once politics turns into a story about dignity and betrayal, facts become secondary, and feelings become strategy.
That’s why the ICC episode didn’t bury the Duterte brand. It refreshed it.
Instead of slowly fading into retirement and legal jeopardy, Duterte became a symbol— “they took our leader”—and symbols are politically useful precisely because you can’t out-argue them with spreadsheets. They don’t need to be consistent. They just need to be emotionally legible.
The Midterms Didn’t Crown Anyone — They Made Marcos Look Beat-able
The May 12, 2025 midterms were the second hit. Philippine midterms usually tilt toward the sitting president’s slate by default, because local politicians like gravity: they move toward whoever controls the levers. This time, the results signaled something more corrosive than a single electoral setback: Marcos could be resisted, and resistance could win.
Multiple credible accounts described the Senate outcome as a blow to Marcos amid his feud with Sara Duterte, with Duterte-backed candidates and unexpected opposition winners complicating the administration’s ability to project inevitability.
In Philippine politics, practicality trumps ideology every time. When a President appears vulnerable, alliances become like a market: people look for exit routes, hedge bets, and reassess whose side they are on. Politics is not about feelings; it is about making a deal.
“Accountability” Is a Dangerous Word When It Looks Like a Weapon
Marcos tried to regain the initiative by leaning into “accountability”—a logical move on paper. Corruption is unpopular. Institutional language is supposed to signal seriousness. And Marcos has spent his presidency trying to position himself as the rule-bound alternative to Duterte’s punitive populism.
The problem is that accountability becomes poison when it looks factional—when the public suspects it’s aimed outward at rivals while friends remain protected. Once that suspicion hardens, anti-corruption campaigns stop looking like reform and start looking like dynasty warfare by other means.
Dynasty warfare isn’t the slick metaphor it sounds like. It’s the lived experience that informs the daily grind of politics – accusations hurled back and forth, probes turned into attacks, leaks, threats, tests of loyalty, and the background hum of destabilization that makes governance seem like an afterthought.
Recent developments have highlighted the volatile nature of this rivalry. In March 2026, Reuters reported that Congress in the Philippines pushed ahead with impeachment proceedings against Vice President Sara Duterte. The rivalry has thus escalated into an institutional-level showdown with high stakes.
Regardless of your loyalties to either party, that’s what happens when dynasties stop merely coexisting and start competing to dominate – the state becomes the playing field.
Approval Numbers Matter Less Than What They Do to Elites
By the end of 2025, Marcos’ hold on the nation appeared to be weakening in the polls. A poll conducted in December 2025 indicated that Marcos’ satisfaction rating hit its lowest point since he assumed office. While the interpretation of any poll can be debated, its political impact remains clear.
In the Philippines, perception isn’t a side story. It’s a governing resource. Once a president loses the aura of inevitability, everyone starts acting as if succession has already begun.
Why the Duterte Restoration Story Keeps Coming Back
Here’s the uncomfortable point: the Duterte comeback narrative isn’t rising only because voters “love authoritarian nostalgia.” It rises because Marcos has struggled to offer a convincing alternative that feels both emotionally credible and practically competent.
Many voters don’t choose “illiberal populism” as an ideology. They choose it as a shortcut to certainty. When daily life feels unstable—prices, disasters, crime fears, corruption fatigue—punitive leadership sells because it offers a simple emotional promise: someone will be punished, someone will be controlled, someone will “do something.”
Marcos cannot beat that offer with lectures about institutions. He can only beat it by making institutions feel like they actually work—cleanly, fairly, and consistently.
What Marcos Would Have to Do — Quickly — to Change the Trajectory
If Marcos wants to prevent a Duterte return to Malacañang, the task is not mainly rhetorical. It’s operational.
First: stop looking like he’s governing by reaction.
Fewer unforced errors. Fewer mixed signals. Less palace intrigue in public view. Philippine voters will tolerate a lot, but they can smell drift.
Second: if he invokes accountability, he has to apply it inward as well as outward.
Nothing turbocharges a populist rival faster than the perception that “the powerful protect their own.” If accountability becomes a slogan used to hit enemies while shielding allies, it becomes a gift to Sara Duterte.
Third: don’t let Sara Duterte own the emotional register of politics.
Marcos can’t out-grievance her, and he shouldn’t try. But he can compete on competence and fairness—if he can make those qualities visible enough that people feel them in their daily lives, not just in speeches.
The ICC Moment Was a Legal Milestone — and a Political Accelerant
The tragedy is that the ICC episode—whatever one thinks of Duterte’s record—didn’t remain a legal event. It became a political accelerant.
And in Philippine politics, accelerants rarely burn only one target.
So yes: a Duterte restoration is increasingly imaginable. The conditions are ripening—an unpopular incumbent, an energized rival dynasty, and a political class that always senses weakness faster than it senses policy.
But it still isn’t inevitable.
Marcos has time—just not much—to prove that “accountability” is more than a factional weapon, and that stability can be built without sliding back into the politics of fear.